All the president's tweeps promoting his agenda

Want to talk to a member of the Council of Economic Advisers or the White House’s deputy senior adviser for communications and strategy? Now you can just tweet at them.

More than a dozen senior-level officials and press staffers have joined Twitter since August to promote President Barack Obama’s agenda, respond to policy questions, argue with skeptical journalists and, often, cheer on their favorite sports teams.

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Unlike Jofi Joseph — the National Security Council staffer who was fired for criticizing senior White House officials under the nom de plume @NatSecWonk — these accounts have names and titles attached and have been verified by Twitter.

There’s no mocking the president or his senior staff. Only officials authorized to use Twitter are able to access it on their official computers and BlackBerrys. And all accounts come with the disclaimer that they may be automatically archived in compliance with the Presidential Records Act.

It’s part of a White House communication strategy that prefers targeted messages to voters on a variety of outlets to blunter instruments like Oval Office addresses.

“There was always a desire to engage more on Twitter,” said Matt Lehrich (@Lehrich44), an assistant press secretary who signed up this summer. Economic aides, for instance, had used @WhiteHouse to answer questions, so it was “sort of a natural evolution” for them to get their own accounts.

CEA Chairman Jason Furman (@CEAChair) and member Betsey Stevenson (@CEABetsey) launched official accounts last month and took economic questions with #WHChat. Communications staffers not yet on the medium are easing onto the site — Jessica Santillo (@Santillo44), an assistant press secretary, signed up last week, and Dag Vega (@DagVega44), director of broadcast media, joined last month.

Staffers’ accounts have followers numbered in the hundreds or thousands rather than the 4.3 million that follow @WhiteHouse. The @BarackObama account, run by the pro-Obama nonprofit Organizing for Action, has more than 39 million.

But they help the White House reach constituencies in search of more specific news. Katherine Vargas (@Vargas44), director of Hispanic media, often tweets in Spanish, while Director of Specialty Media Shin Inouye’s feed (@Inouye44) is heavy on LGBT news.

The use of official White House Twitter accounts linked to an individual staffer’s persona dates to early 2010, when then-deputy press secretary Bill Burton started using @billburton44 — he had created the account the previous summer — to tweet about press briefings and presidential travel. Then-press secretary Robert Gibbs soon joined him, telling POLITICO that “it was fascinating to see what people are thinking, writing, doing in real time” in response to Burton’s tweets.

That’s part of the appeal for the White House — getting to be part of fast-moving and around-the-clock conversations rather than observing them from on high.

“These days, by the time you write, edit, vet and format a press release or statement, a story can reach millions of people,” said Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08), a former NSC spokesman who has posted more than 2,000 tweets since leaving the White House earlier this year. “Twitter lets you respond in real time.”

Twitter allows for a certain level of “transparency” for the White House, Lehrich said, as users get to follow conversations between White House spokespeople and their counterparts on Capitol Hill or with reporters.

The platform also makes it possible for Americans to ask questions of senior officials who would otherwise be hard to reach. “When we answer those questions, we don’t just take the ones that are like, ‘Why is Obamacare so great?’ People will ask tough questions,” Lehrich said. “And if they’re asked in a smart, thoughtful way that is looking for a real, honest response, then people are always eager to take those questions on even if they’re not coming from a place of being sympathetic to our position.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney has occasionally engaged back and forth with Brendan Buck (@Brendan_Buck), a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and other White House staffers are increasingly turning to rebut reports they see as inaccurate.

A few other press-facing presidential aides, including Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44), joined over the course of the next two-plus years, but it wasn’t until 2013 that the onslaught began. Before then, some in the press office would respond to reporters’ tweets via email — they still sometimes do — and felt as though they would have liked to engage on Twitter. Others say they didn’t feel like they were missing much.

“I don’t know that I felt terribly hamstrung by not having a[n official] Twitter account,” said Nick Papas (@nwpapas), who left the White House press office in April. “More engagement is always better, but I don’t know that it’s necessary for people to participate in every Twitter war that’s out there.”

Still, Papas was paying attention to Twitter through a personal account. “If you’re a reporter or work with reporters, it’s pretty much malpractice to not be on Twitter,” he said. And, indeed, more than a few White House staffers lurk on Twitter, following White House news but not tweeting from their accounts.